The Books: Accidentally on Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity, by John Strasberg

Daily Book Excerpt: Theatre

Next book on the acting/theatre shelf is the classic Accidentally on Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity, by John Strasberg

I took an intense acting workshop with John Strasberg, son of Lee. It only lasted 4 or 5 days but I came out of it altered. It was one of those workshops. Going into it, I had been tense with excitement and anticipation, because Lee Strasberg was so important to my own development and growth, as a teenager, and his influence was so vast (perhaps too vast), that being connected, in some small way, to that legacy was really exciting to me. I did not know much about John Strasberg, although I had read his sister’s books (the one about Marilyn Monroe, in particular). He came off as a troubled young man, resisting the domination of his strict parents, who often were much more affectionate and tender with the actors they coached than with their own children. But other than that, I didn’t know much about him. Once I moved to New York and started attending sessions at the Actors Studio on 44th Street, John Strasberg came into my circle of vision, because he was always there, and sometimes acted as moderator of the twice-weekly sessions. I would sit in the balcony of that old converted church and stare down at his head from above, and he had a quiet intense manner that demanded you listen. He was mainly gentle, although he had a temper (which I witnessed in the workshop I took with him). But you got the feeling that he loved actors, and loved the struggle, and was gentle with actors who at least were working sincerely. (If you tried to bullshit him, though, or snow him – look out. He went into a white-hot rage in those situations.) But I would stare down at him, sitting in the building that his father had helped create, and think of how odd life was, how much of a dovetail, how perfect it was that I would now be going to those sessions, the sessions that Marilyn Monroe and Shelley Winters and Michael Gazzo and all the others attended. So I felt a strange connection to John Strasberg (I am sure he gets that a lot), merely because of who his father was.

It wasn’t until I took the workshop with him that all memories of his father went out the window, and I was forced to deal with the actual man in front of me, and his own brilliant and insightful thoughts on acting (which veered far away from his father’s approach, although there was some overlap).

Both Susan and John Strasberg studied acting with their father, which complicated the relationship, because he was as tough (and sometimes tougher) on them than with the other people at the Studio.

If Lee Strasberg took a mainly Freudian approach to the business of acting training, then John Strasberg is Jungian. He works a lot with dreams. Not so much literal dreams, but that you – as an actor (or director) – have a “dream’ of what you want to do, with a scene, a play, a film. It already exists in your head, a perfect expression of what you desire/want – and how does one enter that dream, to make it palpable, real? How do you LIVE that dream in front of people? I responded so damn strongly to that concept, because it was so connected to my own feelings about art, although I had never been able to articulate it. Some of Lee Strasberg’s techniques were too … well … technical for me, and after studying the Method for years, I came to believe that the Method was really effective (in my experience, just to reiterate) with beginning actors who need to really train themselves to concentrate and relax. The Method stuff (sense memory exercises, the affective memory exercise, and especially Song and Dance) really really helps with that. (Or, it can. Depends on how it is taught.) Song and Dance is one of the craziest and most effective exercises I have ever done in my life. Also: TERRIFYING.

My original training was the Meisner technique, which has to do with repetition, and I really really took to that. I still use some of those ideas and techniques when I work now. But the strict Method stuff just never set me free, the way it is supposed to. I did the exercises, I worked on them, I created the breakfast drink, etc., but rarely used it in my work. Or, I didn’t consciously use it. You tell me to imagine a hot humid day and it’s there for me automatically, instantly. Maybe because I’ve been playing make-believe for my whole life. I don’t know. Some people would agonize over how they couldn’t ACTUALLY feel the humidity, etc. I never cared. I’m not saying I’m better, I’m trying to describe my frustration with taking that technique too literally. And then there are people who are just gifted in this stuff on a whole other level (Ellen Burstyn comes to mind. My friend Ted worked with her once, and he describes how every night in the play she was doing, she had to “create” having a cold. The character had a flu. Ellen Burstyn herself was not sick, but Ted describes how she actually had snot-running, sniffling, and you totally believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was sick as a dog. That’s using the Method on a whole other level. She’s a genius at it.)

John Strasberg worked with all of his father’s techniques, but he added a layer of dreamlike mystery to the process, and he responded so beautifully and warmly to actors who appeared to be attempting to enter their own dreams. Even if you fail, you have committed yourself 100% to your dream of the character.

He was a quiet coiled man, and could be quite intimidating. He was serious and sweet. We all filed into the workshop, and then there he was, in the flesh. I had read his book (the book I will be excerpting today), and had fallen in love with his ideas about theatre and process. I was so excited but also so nervous that my heart was throbbing. It was so important to me that he … like me? Validate me? All of that was going on. What if he thought I was full of shit? He did not suffer fools.

The first day of the workshop he threw someone out of class. That guy had had it coming, it was shocking that he hadn’t been reprimanded earlier. He had a way of taking over a room, and he considered himself as an equal to the Professors. He refused to be subordinate, and just LISTEN and accept that he had a lot to learn, too. (Why are you going to SCHOOL then, bro?) After a heated exchange, with this problematic student arguing arrogantly with something Strasberg said (it was more rude than anything else), Strasberg said, and you could feel the rage although he spoke quietly, “Get out of my classroom.” A bomb of silence dropped. The student was stunned. “You mean …” Strasberg said, “Leave. Now.” He got up and left. Now I had had issues with this guy from the get-go and had wondered why someone hadn’t clocked him one. He ruined every class he was in. Although it was a stressful moment, I trusted Strasberg immediately for having the balls to call the guy on the bullshit. It was funny, though – many of the other people in the classroom bitched about it later, how “mean” Strasberg was, etc. There was something about Strasberg’s quiet clarity that demanded something of you as you listened. You could not tune out. It was confrontational, in a very quiet way. Now this is WHY I take such workshops, this is WHY I am interested in art. Because it is confrontational and it requires full engagement. I WANT to be confronted, and scared, and put up against the wall. I thought it was great. Mean? You thought that was “mean”? Amateurs.

Strasberg talked a lot about his theories of theatre, and acting process, and also discussed boredom (one of the great gifts of the workshop). He said that often in workshop settings, or even when you’re an audience member at a play or a movie – you feel boredom come over you, and you try to re-engage, you think YOU may be the problem, that you are not being polite or attentive enough. Strasberg said, “Boredom is very important in life. It helps you to know when something is wrong.” I have never forgotten those words.

This was not a typical workshop, where he assigned scenes for us to do for him, or put us through acting exercises. He was interested in something else.

The story I’m about to tell is actually something I’ve wanted to tell before, but I haven’t because it will sound like I am bragging. But it’s one of those things that happened that you never forget, that propels you to a new level, that fills you with a sense of confidence, happiness, and certainty – certainty that you are on the right path. He gave me that. But, to give myself credit, it was only because I “showed up” so fully in that workshop that he responded to me in the way that he did. He had nothing but contempt for people who only met him half-way, or who fought him, or tried to bullshit him. He had zero time for any of that. He could write people off in a second. He was actually very scary that way. I walked into the second day of the workshop actually trembling.

Here was the assignment he gave us.

Pick your favorite play. Pick a play that you are dying to act in. And come in and tell me about the play.

That was it. That was the assignment. Not work on a SCENE from said play. But pick the play, and then come into the workshop the next day and tell John Strasberg about the play. He did not give us more details than that. He did not say, “Please tell me your favorite things about the play – please tell me why this role is right for you – please tell me your production ideas …” It was brief. “Pick a play and come in and talk about it.”

I had read his book. I had a feeling where we might be going. I knew that the surface instructions were a smokescreen. He didn’t want a book report, although he didn’t express that. I knew we were going to go somewhere deep. I did not take it lightly. (Well, that is no surprise. I take nothing lightly.) Strasberg is interested in entering your own dream: of a character, of you as an artist, of a playwright’s themes. I didn’t have much thinking to do about which play I wanted to talk about. I immediately knew (and felt a corresponding bolt of terror) that I wanted to bring in Tennessee Williams’ little-known Two Character Play. I have been obsessed with that play for 20+ years now. I have done workshops of it. I have done scenes from it. I keep circling back to it. It feels dangerous to me. Gena Rowlands should play that part. And if she’s not available, then I’ll take a crack at it. It requires Rowlands’ kind of madness, that panicked denial of reality that Rowlands nails so damn well. But I have never really been able to articulate what it is about that play that has hooked me in so hard (and I fail, yet again, in the piece I link to above).

I didn’t sleep at all the night before the next day of the workshop. I kept thinking about Two Character Play and what the hell I should say about it, beyond, “It’s fucking great. I must do it someday.” The plot is interesting, I suppose, but the play isn’t “about” its plot. I really was coming up blank. I re-read the play. I really worried about the next day.

Strasberg also hadn’t told us who he would call on, or the order in which we each would talk about our play. Walking into the workshop the next day was strolling into a giant and scary unknown. I was terrified. I felt like I hadn’t prepared enough. I had no notes to refer to, just a copy of the script. I hadn’t outlined what I wanted to say. Some people came in with collages they had made, or pictures, or binders with notes. You know, you had no idea what you were going to be called on to present, and Strasberg had already thrown someone out of class, so it was definitely not a friendly atmosphere. It wasn’t a mean atmosphere, either – just tense and fraught with anxiety. Or maybe that was just me.

Strasberg asked who would like to go first. I felt a swoon of relief, which then showed me what a coward I was. Basically I was relieved that he was leaving it up to US who wanted to speak, and so … if I wanted to, I could hold back and NOT raise my hand, let others walk into the great unknown before me, so I could get a lay of the land through their experience … or … if I really wanted to, I could not raise my hand at all, and see if I could speak up the following day. I was sure I would be calmer the following day. All of those thoughts pulsed through my head in that first moment in the workshop, and immediately afterwards I felt shame at how much I was copping out, how much I was abandoning myself – willingly abandoning myself. It filled me with rage, so I put my hand up instantly. Like: fuck YOU, Sheila, for being such a scaredy cat! A couple of other people had also raised their hands, and Strasberg picked one of them to go first. But the mere act of me putting my hand in the air had changed my energy completely. Now I felt I had to speak, and it had to be today.

The first person, throwing himself into the fray, started talking about the play and why he had picked it. Strasberg stopped him almost immediately. Asked him to clarify something. He was not mean. He was not contemptuous. He was quiet and open. But he was listening on another level. On the level of dreams. The person answered the question. Strasberg asked another one. The person fumbled an answer, getting confused. Strasberg waited for him to think it out. Then asked another question. By this point, we were 10 minutes into this person’s “turn” and he hadn’t even gotten out the list of characters or the plot or anything about the play. It was confusing. What was Strasberg getting at? Was he just giving the guy a hard time? It wasn’t that. Most people in life prefer to live on the surface of things, actors included. You may think you are going deep, but you have to realize how deep the job requires you to go. That’s difficult for some people. John Strasberg was a master psychologist, in a quiet unassuming way, and could tell, 5 seconds in to the student talking, that he was on the surface. He was doing a book report. He was being obedient, and careful, and intellectual, and Strasberg clocked him on it immediately. The conversation went on for about 40 minutes, and it was actually frustrating to watch – but it was frustrating on an interesting level. As I listened to the back and forth, and as I realized that this guy would not get to talk about the play at all, I first felt annoyed that Strasberg kept interrupting. But as the exchange went on, I started to realize what was happening. It wasn’t about a teacher constantly interrupting a student. Too many students go into classes with a sense of entitlement, like: “I’m HERE, aren’t I”, as though that is enough. Strasberg asked him questions about the play, but he was more interested in this guy’s response to it, and why he wanted to talk about that play. Why did you choose THAT play? The answers never seemed sufficient for Strasberg. But the conversation itself was expansive and deep, a one on one with the rest of us watching. I know that there were those in that room who freaking hated John Strasberg for shit like this. They thought he was arrogant, a bully, and impossible to please. I had an opposite reaction. I just stared at him, trying to hear on the level that he was hearing. Strasberg would take the time to turn back to us, and tell us why he was asking all of those questions, but for the most part he stayed focused on the student.

Finally that conversation died down and Strasberg asked who wanted to go next. Now everyone was terrified to face that interrogation. Jesus. I clearly haven’t thought about the script at ALL and how will I deal with him interrupting my speech every other sentence? Only a couple of people raised their hands this time, and he chose someone else (not me, although I had raised my hand again. I was now chomping at the bit to go toe to toe with Strasberg. I was DYING for it. I COULD NOT wait until the next day for my turn. That was impossible. I NEED TO DO IT NOW.)

The second person had an identical experience to the first. Strasberg interrupted them almost immediately with a question. Or an observation. Something that threw them off of their carefully prepared flow. The room was baffled by him. Scared of him. What the hell did he want? What were we SUPPOSED to say? Would ANYTHING pass muster with this guy? Another 40 minute conversation ensued, with the student trying to get back to the play, and Strasberg interrupting them with almost every sentence. Not rudely or shortly. But with incisive deep questions, requiring the student to dig deeper, get more personal. I think that was his issue, mainly. People were not talking personally enough. Strasberg is all about the personal. Don’t give me a book report. Give me what is in your heart. He didn’t SAY that, though. The whole assignment was just a big “Gotcha” test, or at least that’s what it felt like. He hadn’t prepared us for what HE was going to do when we came in to talk about our plays. He hadn’t said, “Now I am going to be rough on what you say … I am not just going to sit back and listen … I am going to engage … ”

The second person also struggled, got confused. With each question, they got farther away from the play itself – and deeper into the personal. Strasberg was, to be clear, not “correcting” the student. It’s not like the student said, “I am going to talk about Hamlet because I love the idea of revenge in the play” and Strasberg interrupted with, “Actually, the theme of Hamlet is more about THIS … you’re talking about Hamlet wrong.” Strasberg wasn’t talking about the plays at ALL. Not really. He was asking penetrating questions about what the person said, the words they chose to use … and then sometimes asking them to think deeper, and maybe rephrase – because the words we use to describe what is going on in our heart are very important. It wasn’t a script analysis class. It was a psychological battery. You offered yourself up to him, and, with each question, people started feeling, “Well … clearly I am not getting this … what I am giving him is not enough …”

Arguments ensued. Not as heated as the one on the first day when he tossed that bum out of class. But pretty sharp arguments. People have all kind of defense mechanisms in place, and often you utilize them even when you don’t mean to. You try to plead your case. You erect a boundary and talk from behind it. Strasberg was having NONE of that. He remained cool and calm (scary), but would point out the resistance he was feeling.

That was a scary-ass room.

Then Strasberg said, “Okay, so who’s next?” My hand flew up, and he picked me.

I believe I have set up how the day was going. I fully expected it to go the same way for me. Why would it not? Clearly that was Strasberg’s teaching technique. I was ready for it, hot for it, I was dying for him to interrupt me, and make me go deeper. I was dying to hear the first question he asked on his first interruption. What was he going to say to me??

I said, “The play I’m going to talk about is The Two-Character Play by Tennessee Williams – ”

He interrupted me. “Do we get to hear the title of the play?”

Like I said, even Tennessee Williams afficianadoes haven’t heard of Two Character Play, so he had heard me say “a two-character play” and then keep talking, as though I had left out the title.

So I said, “That is the title.”

Strasberg burst out laughing, and said, “Oh! Okay. Please continue.” The whole room laughed, the tension breaking for a second.

So I started talking.

And I talked for half an hour straight.

And he did not interrupt me once.

Not. Once.

As I kept talking, and as he remained silent and focused on me, I started getting confused and scared. My whole head was beet-red (as multiple people informed me after the class). Why wasn’t he interrupting me? Was I doing it wrong? I didn’t refer to the script. I sat at my little chair, and talked and talked and talked, I remember gesturing, I remember stopping for a second to think … and he let me think. He didn’t interrupt me thinking. He just waited for me to get my thoughts together to continue. The entire energy in the room changed. I know everyone in the room was also on the edge of their seats, like … “why … why isn’t he interrupting her?” And the focus then turned to me with a bright bright spotlight. I could feel it happen, I could feel the wattage intensify. It was like suddenly realizing you are far ahead of the pack. You are going to win the race. After slogging along in the group, suddenly you were alone on the road. Like I said, I have always wanted to try to write this experience down, but have hesitated because of the reality that it will sound like I am bragging. But minor triumphs (and major) should be treasured and remembered, because they will be few and far between, and they can help you soldier on when the going gets tough. I have often felt invalidated, or disappointed, but then I will remember what that day felt like – when John Strasberg didn’t interrupt me once, and never took his eyes off of me – and I remember who I am, and my strengths, and why I am doing what I am doing.

I don’t even remember what I said exactly. I just talked. I talked about my love of the script, I talked about how it haunted me, I talked about how I had worked on it in Chicago, I talked about how I saw myself doing it, I talked about the freakin’ SET I wanted – I talked about the characters, and why their crackup was something I wanted to experience for myself. I talked about how it was a real Theatre Play, a real play ABOUT theatre, and that it was MY dream of what theatre was like. Try talking for half an hour straight and you’ll see how damn long it is!! But as I kept going, and as he never interrupted me, I started gathering up my forces, I started to feel my strength, I started to forget my fear, and I knew exactly – EXACTLY – who I was in that moment.

Finally I stopped talking. I don’t think I summed up things neatly. I didn’t end with a thesis statement. I just finally was done talking. So I stopped. It was that sudden.

You could have heard a pin drop in that room. I was still so nervous that I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered if he was about to crucify me with some devastating comment about how full of shit I was, how he hadn’t interrupted me because he was so gobsmacked that I even had a tiny shred of a delusion that I even deserved to be in that room. That is what I thought might be about to hit me.

And then all he said to me was, after about 15, 20 seconds of silence was, “I’d like to see you work on a scene from the play. Ask someone in the class to work with you and bring it in next time. Okay?”

That was it.

THAT WAS IT????

I was on the edge of a nervous collapse, wound tight as a top. I nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

Then someone (bless them) asked the question everyone (including myself) wanted to hear. “John … can I ask you why you never interrupted Sheila?”

John said, “The entire time she was talking, she was engaged with her dream of the play. You could see it vibrating off of her, her face, her gestures, her voice. She was clearly so personal and so involved with herself that I felt no need to stop her. She’s already in the space of work. She’s ready to work. Couldn’t you feel that?”

I didn’t even know my own name when I walked out of that room. It may not be a triumph on the level of winning an Oscar, but that day – when John Strasberg didn’t interrupt me once – is one of my greatest triumphs.

And I did bring in a scene from the play for the next day with my friend Stephen. We cavorted around in our pajamas, and I wore a tiara, and held up a lit candleabra, and popped pills and put on false eyelashes, and screamed at him, and whatever, I don’t really remember the scene. Strasberg had asked a couple of other people to also come in with scenes from the plays they had spoken about. I suppose he wanted to see us attempt to enter our own dreams about these plays. I have dreamt about doing Two Character Play for most of my life. We finished working, and I was already a wreck. I was sure I was awful, blah blah. Strasberg spent time talking to my scene partner. He liked my scene partner, that was obvious. He gave him notes and suggestions. He worked with him a bit. He liked the theatricality of the play, he was not familiar with it, and he liked it. The play is not realistic. He thought what we did was a hoot, and said he actually would like to see a production of it. So that was all fine. But he focused only on my scene partner, not looking at me once.

I felt betrayed and abandoned. As Strasberg kept talking only to my scene partner, I started to sink into a pit of despair. Gearing up for the inevitable assault that was coming. I was sure that he had hated me, that I had let him down after my triumph in class the day before, I was sure that he was thinking, “Well. She sucks. Oh well, too bad, I had high hopes for her.”

After talking with my scene partner for about 15 minutes, NEVER ONCE ACKNOWLEDGING ME, Strasberg turned to look at me. He didn’t say anything. I looked back at him. Again, that current of connection, but I was so uncertain, so on the edge, I felt like screaming in his face, “WHAT? WHAT DO YOU SEE RIGHT NOW??”

Finally he said, simply, quietly, bluntly, “Sheila. What do you think your problem is?”

It was a terrible moment for me. I clearly had so many problems he didn’t even know where to start. That was obviously why he led off with that. I was on the verge of tears. I could feel his brutal assessment that would soon be forthcoming.

One of my strengths in that class was my openness to whatever he did. I did not resist him. I felt that would be in my best interest, I would learn more. I’m not much of a resister anyway, at least not if I trust you as a teacher. Was this a setup? Like I would give an answer, and then he would say, “No. You’re wrong. HERE is what your problem is.”

So I can’t remember what I said, but I did pull myself together and give him an honest answer about what I thought my problem was as an actress. “Well, I think I blah blah blah blah blah.” It wasn’t a bullshit answer. It was honest. I didn’t talk for half an hour this time. I had given it some thought when he asked it, I didn’t rattle it off, but I did not go on at length.

He didn’t respond immediately to what I said. He took it in, just staring at me across the room, with that face that was so hard to read at times. I have rarely felt so seen. I didn’t even know what he was seeing, but I knew it was me – all of me, my complexity, my nerves, my desire to do well, how much fun I had when I got to play make-believe, all of it.

Then he said, and this was the comment that altered me, “I think your problem is that you feel like you are supposed to have problems. You actually have no problems. You have no problems.”

He didn’t go on and on. That was ALL he said to me.

It was one of the most validating moments of my adult life as an actress. I felt 500 feet tall.

I said, “I … I have no problems?”

“Nope. You have no problems. You think you should. But you do not.”

“And so … that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s all you have to say to me?”

“That’s all.”

“Okay.”

The way I said “that’s all you have to say to me?” made the room laugh – everyone relates to that feeling in an acting class, and John Strasberg laughed too, his face bursting out into warmth. He gets it too. But he stuck to his guns. “That’s all.”

So I left the stage with my scene partner.

I sat in my chair, and was barely able to concentrate on the other scenes going on. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but I knew that something important had happened. That someone had just told me that there was nothing wrong with me, and that his energy with me was very different from his energy with the other students in that class, and that everyone had recognized it.

On the last day of the workshop, as the class dispersed, he came over to me and pulled me aside. We then stood there for a while, not speaking to each other. He could be quite shy. And I felt very shy in his presence. Then he said, out of nowhere, “You and I …. are kindred spirits, you know.” I almost burst into tears because I had felt the same thing with him over the course of the workshop, only I never would have presumed to say something like that to him, and I said, “Yes. I felt it too.” He saw the emotion on my face and then said, “Keep working. You’re exciting. I won’t forget you.” We were awkward and at ease at the same time. We had recognized one another.

I will never forget him, either.

I haven’t even said one thing about his book. All I can say is: buy it. It is not only a memoir, but an insightful and personal look at the way one man thinks about art.

The excerpt below describes working on a scene with Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio.

Excerpt from Accidentally on Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity (Applause Books), John Strasberg

Can you imagine how I felt when my parents drafted me to do a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire with Marilyn in my father’s private classes? “Young man. Young, young, young man …” I was instructed to do everything I could to help her. My soul was now indentured to serve their relationship with Marilyn. At twenty-one, I felt that my career had already been erased.

Marilyn and I had known each other for almost eight years. We liked one another, but I was always shy. Being alone together was painful. The only other person with whom I’ve had the same reaction was Montgomery Clift. I know now that they were as shy as I was, but at the time I couldn’t separate their feelings from mine. Nor did I realize that I had a talent for sensing other people’s thoughts and feelings. Marilyn, Monty, Kim Stanley, and my second wife, Sabra Jones, are the only people I’ve personally known who trembled (physically) in real life.

We rehearsed in the new studio at Carnegie Hall that my father had rented for his private classes. The Capital Theatre Building, where he had held his classes for the past several years, was being demolished. Carnegie Hall is enormous: the corridors are labyrinthine and the floors seem to be of different heights. The studio – Room 1013 – was at the end of a long corridor, in the corner opposite the men’s room; a large, relatively narrow rectangle. Light streamed through the high windows unless the red velvet curtains were closed. Those curtains were borrowed from the warehouse where Cheryl stored scenery and costumes from productions of hers. My parents loved furniture that came from plays. Our house had a sofa that had been used in The Rose Tattoo. Later, after Marilyn died, they added the white, baby grand piano that had belonged to her. The room had a platform/stage at the far end, which ran the fifteen-foot width of the room, and risers for five rows of chairs. The room held about forty people.

Marilyn and I leaned against a window frame, and she asked me what I thought she should do. I suggested that we read the scene together and see what happened. After several read-throughs, we discussed what the Kowalski apartment might be like. I didn’t care what it was like; my character didn’t live there and would not have seen it before the scene. Marilyn seemed anxious; she wanted and expected me to help her, which was strange since she was a star with much more experience than I. What did my parents think I knew that she didn’t? Marilyn and I liked one another, and once we began to work, our shyness ebbed. Work gave something to share, a common point of concentration. Once she got over her initial anxiety, she was very capable of doing her own work.

I never rehearse scenes to be done in a class too thoroughly. I always devote my scene work to the initial stages of creation, when one is intentionally dreaming and imagining what composes the character and the world of the play. Scenes are never at performance level. The should be done in Performance workshops, and only with sufficiently trained acting students who can apply their work to the rehearsal process in which performance is the goal. Most actors are taught that rehearsing is a process of planning how to illustrate one’s ideas of a scene. They assume that these ideas are the life of the character and the play, and that rehearsing necessitates the collaboration and mutual agreement of their partners. They believe that the rehearsal process involves a mechanical working-out of the technical aspects of the scene and, without realizing it, they start thinking like a director. They work on things an actor has little control over instead of the fundamental creative process.

To intentionally dream about the world in which the character lives is work which the actor must always do alone; it is then that he establishes the link between himself and the play. This is what I now recognize takes place in the actor’s personal dream space. What most people call rehearsing is really a superficial form of directing and performing. I always loved this intuitively and I never cared about designing a scene when I did scene work in class.

Marilyn and I rehearsed in the tentative fashion that is common when actors are exploring a new world. We did a lot of anxious searching in one another’s eyes. This longing for eye-contact is one of the things I remember most about her, as she trembled with the desperate hunger of a child for life, comfort, love. Beneath whatever mask I was presenting to the world, I trembled in the same way, but no one ever saw it, not even me.

In the midst of this confusion and doubt, with chaos yawning beneath us, we were investigating the situation and relationships of the scene. We threw ourselves into this imaginary world full of strange people and places, synthesizing ourselves and the reality of the rehearsal into the reality of the play. When this transformation is successful actors often experience simultaneous sensations of terror and ecstasy: like falling in love, the experience transports them to another reality and dimension of existence.

Each time we would finish going through the scene, Marilyn would ask me if she thought that it was OK. She wanted to know if there were other things she should be doing. She was desperately insecure, but a very hard worker and nobody’s fool. The dumb blonde persona may have been founded in reality – the nervousness in her mouth and lips were genuine symptoms of personal problems – but it was clear that she was aware that she had created a female character in the tradition of the sad sack tramps of Chaplin and Keaton. When she came to New York to work with my father it was because she wanted to being recognized as being more than the mask. In their cruelty and arrogance, people condemned her.

Our rehearsals were sketches of life, character, and ideas. There are rooms in museums devoted exclusively to artist’s sketchbooks like the one devoted to Turner at the Tate Gallery in London. I love them as much as I love really good rehearsals; there is an essence captured that is the quintessence of art. One always hopes the production will be able to sustain that level of intensely intimate reality. Of course, watching most good rehearsals is boring; nothing appears to be happening. Everyone seems lost in thought, preoccupied with something that only they can see. This is the discovery which makes rehearsal time so essential. Many actors and directors don’t know what rehearsals are for; they jump into rhythm and design as though there is nothing else. I guess that for them, there isn’t. I never had problems learning lines, which is what many people think is the most difficult part of acting. Being creative doesn’t mean that I couldn’t remember a direction or repeat blocking. None of these basic realities of acting are problems if one has a good creative process. If you have a solid foundation, acting becomes profoundly involving and pleasurable, even after many performances. Actors who get bored after a few performances aren’t serious about their work.

My biggest problem was repeating emotions. I was trained to solve this problem by using sense memory techniques; it was effective, but a solution I wasn’t satisfied with. My aversion stemmed from the need to plan an exercise so that I would be able to release a feeling I knew was going to happen on the next page. The technique seemed mechanical, and because it anticipated what was going to happen, concentrating my work on it pulled me out of the moment. My father said it was like a musical partition. In the moment of performance, artists and athletes have to be able to respond spontaneously. Even their thought processes must be capable of responding in the moment of action. Planning exercises like this separated my thought process from those of the character in the play. Despite the emotional power and consistency which is the strength of my father’s Method, I felt as though I was manipulating myself. Even when I mastered the technique and could do exercises quickly, without diverting my concentration from the play, two things happened: the life of the play was reduced to a series of sensory and emotional exercises, and the exercises would wear out and need to be replaced by others. The entire technique interfered with my intuition, imagination, intentional dreaming, and spontaneity. It made it harder to get involved with the play, because my habits were trained to concentrate on a technique that stopped the natural, organic thinking I had in my personal dream space.

In the Streetcar scene, a young man collecting money for selling newspapers knocks on the door and Blanche invites him in and begins to flirt with him. She is so desperate for company that she needs to be with someone, anyone, rather than be alone. The boy doesn’t really know what to do and wants to leave. On the day of the scene, I prepared in a quiet corner for almost an hour. When the scene was announced, I entered from stage right and knocked on a pole that served as an imaginary door. On the pole hung a curtain, beyond which I could see the room Marilyn had created with objects that she had brought to involve herself in Blanche’s world. I didn’t want to focus on anything I saw, though my cursory glimpse took in a make-up table full of cosmetics and clothing spread all over the stage. Marilyn opened the “door”. Her make-up was almost grotesque, as I’d never seen her. Her eyes were liquid, full of a mixture of terror and longing; she was trembling more than I had ever seen anyone tremble.

The scene felt as though life were moving in slow motion, we were so hypnotically attached to one another. The atmosphere seemed thick and waterlike, as though we were “swimming on land”. I didn’t know what either of us would do. She enticed me, flirted with me, and I felt speechless and horribly uncomfortable. I hovered near the “door”, anxious and terrified, wondering if this person, this Blanche of Marilyn’s, was going to faint, fall apart, or attack me. At the end of the scene, the boy leaves. The bizarreness and fear I felt seemed very real; I was relieved to get out. Blanche is left alone. Marilyn took a long moment by herself to finish her sketch and the scene was over. The whole room breathed a sigh of relief, as though everyone had been spellbound.

We talked about what we had worked on. I said that I had worked on the humid, sensual heat of New Orleans, and on the relationship. My father spoke to Marilyn with deserved praise, pointing out details of her behavior to clarify what he had liked in her work. (My father had hopes of directing her in this play and in Anna Christie.)

At the end he turned to me and, with controlled fury, announced that I hadn’t done any work. I sat there, shocked and stone-faced. I didn’t argue. I didn’t even feel angry. I was stunned and ashamed, but somewhere I knew that his reaction seemed unreal; I didn’t understand why I was being attacked. There was no apparent logic to it, but fifteen years later, in the mid-1970s, I told Sabra about this experience. She pointed out that my father was probably jealous of any man who got too close to Marilyn, a thought that would never have occurred to me. I can see now how most people who got close to her became, not just protective, but possessive of her.